Is it essential that poverty be degrading?

I just returned from the Safeway where my notorious line karma ambushed me again. Our local safeway is always understaffed at the checker lines, and the late afternoons are truly miserable. Today I got in there a little after 3, grabbed some stuff and entered the shortest of 3 lines with only 3 shoppers ahead of me. The checker had just begun working on the load of groceries belonging to an exhausted looking woman as more customers piled up behind me in the line. The woman being checked reached into her purse and retrieved a stack of WIC vouchers and immediately a collective moan went up from the line. The woman’s expression never changed as her face flushed cherry red. The checker, a kid in her 20s stopped, put both her hands on her hips, turned to face the line and gave us a scowl that would melt concrete. I don’t know about the others, but she shamed me, and the line behaved thereafter. Not so much as a murmur as the checker methodically checked off the items individually on the tickets one by one, ringing them up then ran each ticket through the imprinting register, then inserting the ticket in the register proper. Those in the back actually abandoned the line, and newcomers joined up only to recognize the drill then flee. I stood there trying to avoid looking at the poor humiliated woman at the focus of resentment and wondered just why anyone would be required to undergo such a thing.